


Bear Witness to Life

by Star_Crow



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Adoption, F/M, Family Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-16 23:58:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11839725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Crow/pseuds/Star_Crow
Summary: Rosa jerked her head behind her. “Jake’s moping again.”Boyle nodded furiously from his own neighbouring workspace. “He’s been like this all week. A triple homicide case came up just yesterday and he didn’t move a muscle. I thought he was dead.”“I am not moping.”Or: Jake is sad about his and Amy's son going to daycare and immediately starts to not-so-subtly angle for another.





	Bear Witness to Life

“Santiago.”

Amy jumped in her seat as Rosa slammed a case file down on her new sergeant’s desk. She and Diaz had closed that fraud case like way over a year ago, leaving only one other possible reason for its sudden presence on her desk. This was just a ruse to get her (and the rest of the precinct’s) attention sharpish. Rosa’s face was a regular state of stony as she stood before Amy, arms crossed firmly.

“What-”

Rosa jerked her head behind her. “Jake’s moping again.”

Boyle nodded furiously from his own neighbouring workspace. “He’s been like this all week. A triple homicide case came up just yesterday and he didn’t move a muscle. I thought he was dead.”

“I am not moping.”

When she pushed up a little to peek over Rosa’s shoulder, Amy found evidence to the contrary. Jake was moping, laying essentially face down on his desk, surrounded by the day’s work that he had yet to even touch. It was already past eleven and he had atleast three unsolved and highly complex complaints to look into, Amy knew.

She was about to remind (reprimand) him as such when Holt emerged from his office. His eyes zeroed in on Jake and his lack of productivity at warp speed.

“Peralta.”

Jake groaned at the sound of the captain’s familiar baritone, leaning back in his chair. “Hey, Captain. Lovely morning, isn’t it?”

“The outdoor temperature is indeed pleasant, so I’m left wondering why you are at your desk when you should be out trying to solve these cases you’ve been assigned.” Holt’s voice had risen by a single bar, Amy noted. Never a great sign. “Are you unwell, detective?”

“No, sir.” 

“Only in his head, but I guess he’s always been that way.” Gina supplied helpfully, not even glancing up from her phone. 

“Thanks, Gina.” Jake deadpanned.

“Don’t mention it.”

Holt’s jaw tightened as he looked back to Jake. “Get out and do your job before I cut your overtime for the rest of the month. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

The whole precinct, even the nobody cops that lurked in the background, had stopped to watch as Holt retreated back to his office silently. Everyone, it seemed, was waiting for one of Jake’s somethings. An awful one liner or a quick dramatic exit with Charles in tow. All they got was a suffering sigh and dead eyes.

“Not even a funny face to the captain’s back,” Charles gasped, rolling out his chair over to Jake’s desk. “I think we should take him to the emergency room ASAP.”

Diaz rolled her eyes. “For what? Being lame?”

“Can you be treated for that?” Hitchcock piped up.

“Look, you guys need to back off,” Terry finally waded in, shooing the other detectives back to their own stations. “Obviously, Jake is missing Thomas.”

An awkward murmur of realisation rippled around the office. If Amy didn’t know him better than that, she would have said she saw a slight reddish tinge on Jake’s cheeks. Suddenly, it all made sense.

This was the sixth working day since she and Jake had been forced to relinquish their son to daycare while they went to the office. The center was specifically for the kids of NYPD employees but Jake said it was as creepy as Sunnyside from Toy Story 3. He would know. Since he could no longer watch Die Hard during the day anymore, Jake had reached a higher degree of education on kids films. Most of Jake’s ultra vague references went over her head but this one got her. Amy had tried her best to fulfill the optimistic mom role but she still wasn’t sure whether it was for her son’s sake, Jake’s, her own, or all of the above. Honestly, Amy wasn’t that wowed by the place either but their son had gotten to that age. He was two now. He needed social interaction beyond just the 99 and that daycare was all they could practically afford. Amy was finding it a steep thing to accustom herself to, but Jake was struggling even more. Before now, apart from the odd occasion where a grandparent took him, Jake would be wholly responsible for Thomas while Amy went out on the streets to catch perps. The Peralta boys had been together almost constantly.

Jake had been on the bench since Amy had returned to work three weeks after having Thomas. Anyone would think that would drive Jake Peralta half mad. In actuality, he had clearly loved having the baby with him, even if it meant only paperwork.

Both normally preferred that they didn’t get too touchy-feely at work but Amy reached out for him now as she perched on the edge of his desk.

“It was for the best, Jake.” she squeezed his hand a little.

“Wow, Santiago, way to make it sound like you got the poor kid euthanised.” Rosa was totally unfazed by the burning look that Amy aimed at her. “He’s gone to daycare. It’s not the end of the world. Besides, he’s gotta go to school one day, right?”

“I know, I know. I’m being stupid. I just miss him, you know? And he’s there all alone,” Jake sighed. “Atleast when he was here, I knew he was totally safe.”

Amy tried not to think of the time that Jake had put Thomas on the lap of a suspected murderer while he searched for the right case file. Admittedly he’d had one hand cuffed to the desk ring and a precinct full of other officers who were watching like eagles. Besides, as Jake immediately pointed out whenever it was brought up, the guy turned out to be totally innocent anyway. 

“Why don’t you two just make a new kid for Jake to look after?”

All the heads in the room swiveled around to face Rosa who sat fairly innocently, feet propped up on her desk as she fiddled with her phone.

“It’s not that simple, Rosa,” Terry’s face was a picture of mortification. “You’re-”

“The only one except the captain that’s not a parent? Yeah, I noticed,” she huffed as she popped another chewing gum in her mouth. “But I don’t need to be one to solve a basic problem. Jake is upset because his kid is too old to be hanging around with him all day. Get him another one. Problem solved.”

Amy turned her head back to look at Jake. She was expecting to see his ‘never in a million years’ face, the completely and utterly horrified face. 

Instead, she was getting puppy eyes. The exact same ones that were mirrored in Thomas. Sickeningly adorable, even on Jake. His fortieth birthday had come and gone but he still somehow managed to capture the charm of an angelic child perfectly.

She snatched her hand back. “No. Nuh uh. Nope. No more.”

“But Ames-”

“No buts.”

“Name of our sex tape.” 

Now it was Jake’s turn to be the recipient of Amy’s red hot glare. “We’re barely managing the one we’ve got.”

“The sex tape or our child?”

“You know which one! As far as I know, only one exists!” Amy snapped. 

“For now.” he retorted under his breath. Boyle heard him and barely bothered to stifle the answering laugh. 

Jake was launching himself straight into very dangerous territory and he knew it. Amy almost didn’t care that the whole precinct was watching their sort of domestic dispute. 

Even Hitchcock and Scully, their attention torn away from their donut tray. Even Holt, conspicuously peering through the office blinds. 

Amy leveled her dark eyes on him. Stone cold. Jake knew he’d almost certainly be sleeping (alone, freezing and eternally awake) on their couch that night if he didn’t wriggle his way out of the danger zone right now.

“We’re managing just fine. Thomas is great. We’re great. Everything’s great. I even got you an extra shot of coffee last week. The Peralta household is great.”

“As it is,” Amy knocked the toe of her boot against his ankle. “We need to save money, not blow it on another baby. Not yet. We can’t afford to breed a family as large as the one I came from.”

Jake’s eyes widened. “Wait. Who said that we were doing that?”

“God, can you imagine it?” Charles said a little too dreamily, planting his head in his hands. “Seven more little Jake Peraltas running about the place.”

From the corner of her eye, Amy saw Terry, Rosa, Hitchcock and Scully visibly shudder at the thought. Holt’s peephole through the office blinds snapped down immediately as soon as the words left Boyle’s mouth. 

Holt clearly wasn’t thrilled to be the honorary grandfather of seven imaginary Peraltas.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Ames,” Jake leant back in his chair, hands behind his head lazily. “But I don’t think I’ve got it in me to father eight children.”

“That’s okay. I’m sure I’ll be able to come to terms with it eventually.”

She narrowed her eyes in his direction but they were warmer, softer this time and her lips were curved into that snarky smile he especially loved. A small burst of relief flooded his system as he watched her. He’d be welcomed back to his side of their bed tonight. Maybe, if he was lucky, Amy might even allow him to be the little spoon for the precious moments they had before Thomas would start creating. 

Jake called that a crisis averted.

Still, there was no harm in making sure that the job was done. He lightly badgered Captain Holt (”It’s in the name of love, sir!”) to let he and Amy go home early. With the extra time he’d won, he took Amy to dinner at her favorite takeout restaurant before going back to their apartment and putting Thomas to bed for her.

“I hope this performance isn’t trying to try and change my mind, Peralta.” 

Jake placed a hand in the center of his chest. “Am I not allowed to treat my wife nicely every once in a while? How could you even think that? I am hurt.”

Amy just rolled her eyes, turning her back on him as she faced the mirror. Her hair was still wet as she swept it up over her shoulder, free hand reaching for the brush on the vanity table. 

“The truth is I’m on my best behavior because I want to apologise for earlier,” he admitted, taking a seat on the edge of the mattress. “I embarrassed you in front of the whole precinct and that was so not cool.”

“You didn’t embarrass me.”

In the mirror’s reflection, she saw Jake quirk up his eyebrows in an insufferably knowing way. No one had ever known her as well as Jake did.

“Okay, so you did embarrass me a bit.” Amy corrected reluctantly.

This time, his brows dropped into a frown.

“Then why aren’t you more mad at me? You hate being embarrassed. Like the time you passed out during that brief-”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Amy cut him off, before releasing a sigh. “I’m not mad at you because it was kind of . . . cute, I guess.”

“Me? Cute? Now that I can’t believe. What have you done with Amy Santiago-Peralta and where can I find her?”

“Very funny,” Amy said as she turned away from her vanity table. “It’s sweet of you to want that with me. It’s just,” she trailed off.

“Not now?”

Jake was trying to not come across as disappointed. She could see it in his motions. The tiny flickers of an expression, down-turned eyes, crinkled brow, there and gone as he schooled his face back into neutrality. His tone was his downfall though. A plain voice on Jake meant more.

“How long is not now gonna be, Ames?”

She knew what he was thinking. Time wasn’t exactly on their side. The worst thing was that she couldn’t tell him that not now would end in a couple of years. They didn’t have a couple of years to let go anymore. Amy’s only regret was that she and Jake had waited too long, wasted so much time on denial that she would do anything to get back now. 

Jake would never say it to her aloud. It’d break her heart. He’d just continue on as if he had. 

“I guess we could just adopt like Charles and Genevieve did. That’d be cool. Thomas would never know any different. You wouldn’t have to be pregnant because I know you totally hated it last time. No missing work, no sickness, no maternity clothes, no nothing. I mean we don’t even have to get a baby if we don’t want to. I’ll get over the work thing eventually. We could just adopt a kid. Like Nikolaj. Nikolaj’s awesome, right? Ours would be, too, if we do it right- ”

He was rambling, his voice getting faster and faster to fill up her silence.

“I didn’t hate it,” she intervened. “It was just,”

Impractical, she thought, and Amy was nothing if not practical. Actually, she was a self-professed control freak. Being pregnant took away her control and dumped it somewhere that took her nine months to find.

“That is why you don’t want to have another, right?”

Amy opened her mouth for the long-winded explanation lurking on the tip of her tongue. Instead, she sighed a sigh of defeat and nodded.

“You should have just said that. I would have got it.”

“I know.” she said simply because she did. Jake would have heard her and backed off so far that it was never mentioned again. 

A small smile sprung to life on Jake’s face, twitching up an eyebrow to match. 

“So, Amy Santiago-Peralta,” Amy tried to keep a moderately straight face as Jake slipped off of the bed and onto a knee for the umpteenth time in their relationship. “Will you do me the honor of adopting a child with me?”

Amy grinned, taking his hands. “Yes.”

“Awesome.”

For all the talk of kids, Jake thought he could see that glint in Amy’s eye. She was always gorgeous, his type in a perfect fit, but she looked especially so in this way. Her hair still wet and tousled from the shower, skin damp and flawless. Amy must have seen something in him, too. By the time he’d struggled to his feet again, she’d drawn him in by the collar, pressing her lips to his own. He was, indeed, going to get lucky tonight, Jake thought, as she pushed him back on to the bed.

His too-good-to-be-true sense had been tingling. 

Thomas answered his intuition, in the form of a pitifully thin wail from his own room. 

After two years on the job, Jake had come to expect it. 

“You still want another one?” Amy smirked as she straightened up, fixing the damage that Jake had inflicted on her bathrobe.

“I’ll admit it seems much less attractive when the kids are stopping me from getting laid,” Jake resigned himself to the opportunity missed and sat back up. “Kidding, I’ll go.”

“My hero.”

“As always.”

**Author's Note:**

> To clarify, I make Jake as 40 in this fic and Amy around 38. This is nothing against older parents who choose to do it naturally at all, just derived from some experiences and opinions within my own family. Hope you enjoy <3


End file.
